Friday, May 17, 2013

It's Maker Faire time again! This is the first year since we started working on Modkit that we do not have a booth at the Bay Area Maker Faire. But that's not because Modkit won't have a presence at the event that runs all day tomorrow and Sunday at the San Mateo Fairgrounds in San Mateo California. We actually have our hands in three different booths: VEX Robotics, Texas Instruments, and the Wiring Project! Here's what we're up to booth-by-booth:

At the VEX Robotics booth, we'll be demoing Modkit for VEX, our new programming environment for the amazing new VEX IQ robotics system. Stop by the VEX Robotitcs booth to see how Modkit and VEX are changing the STEM education equation together!

Next, the Texas Instruments booth will feature Modkit and its new support for the Launchpad family of boards. Support for the MSP430 Launchpad has been under testing for the last few months and we're finalizing some initial support for the Tiva-C launchpad (formally Stellaris.) Stop by the TI booth to try out Modkit support for your new favorite microcontroller platform! If you're itching to try this at home, we're planning to add these boards to our publicly available Modkit Micro preview this weekend. Stay tuned via our Google+ page for updates on when this goes public!

And last but certainly not least, we'll be at the Wiring Project booth showing off Wiring++, a project we've been collaborating on for some time. Wiring ++ brings important computing concepts including multi-threading and event-driven-programming to the world of Microcontrollers. If you don't know the Wiring Project, it is the basis for everything Arduino and is celebrating its 10th birthday this summer. Wiring++ is an important next step for what has proved to be an important project over the last 10 years. Come meet Wiring's creator, Hernando Barragán and try out the amazing new Wiring++ APIs!

For the most part, you can follow the tutorial we posted back in December: http://blog.modk.it/2012/12/happy-holidays-modkit-micro-open-for-all.html But we do want to highlight an important improvement to the board auto-detection. In the previous tutorial we assumed you were using an Arduino Mega 2560 or Arduino Uno which should be autodetected right out of the box (assuming you preinstalled the drivers). But what if you're using a different board? In this example let's assume you're using a Lilypad sewable electronics kit and that you installed the FTDI driver from http://modk.it/download.

The first time you connect the board, it won't auto-detect so you'll need to "choose board from list."

You can then pick your particular board from the growing list of supported boards.

You could then skip into the editor just to play around, but we'll choose "Setup Board Now."

You'll be asked to unplug the board (including the FTDI cable since we're using a Lilypad.)

You'll need to wait a bit for your board to be detected and stored on your computer.

You may need to repeat these steps but if all goes well, you can launch into the Modkit Micro editor.

The next time you open the editor, Modkit should auto-detect your board. For further instructions please see our previous post: http://blog.modk.it/2012/12/happy-holidays-modkit-micro-open-for-all.html and as always, please leave us any feedback in the comments below. If nothing else, just leave us a quick note with the board you're testing and how it all worked.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Hi Everyone! We know that many of you have been really excited about Modkit Micro and we often get asked how you can help. So here we are... We need your help!
We're looking for interns for our Cambridge, MA office (and sometimes the Boston Fab Lab). On a daily basis, our projects brings us from web design/development in Javascript/HTML/CSS/Python to desktop and embedded systems programming in Python and C/C++ . But beyond the technical work we also need help with answering emails, finding bugs and running workshops for kids and novices. Does this sound interesting to you or someone you know?

Great! But just as important as these technical and organizational skills, we're looking for individuals who are just as passionate and excited as we are about democratizing programing and engineering. And don't forget, even when we're finding bugs, we're doing it by playing with electronics and robots! We can't imagine a more dynamic environment to work and play in, and would like your help in finding candidates who have one or more of these skills and are willing to learn more. Please pass this along!

Location: Boston Area
Time: 2-3 afternoons or mornings per week
Who: college students, recent grads, or anyone interested!
Compensation: based on experience
Get in touch: jobs [at] modk [dot] it